Government limits freedom of expression
In the United States, news that people want buried comes out on Saturday night, when people are busy with other things and not paying a lot of attention. Does that happen in Kuwait?
I watched for anyone blogging on this yesterday, but saw nothing. I showed the newspaper to my Kuwaiti friends, who were shocked, and hadn’t heard anything about this. Some of it, I get. I am flummoxed by the forbidding of any mention of veterinary medicine!
From yesterday’s Kuwait Times.
KUWAIT: All newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and printing presses in Kuwait were yesterday issued a list by the government of the types of articles, advertisements and banners that can no longer be printed or published without official approval. Following is the list of the banned topics and the ministry concerned:
Interior Ministry:
1. Publication or display of slogans that glorify some countries against others.
2. Displaying pictures that glorify some political personalities or religious figures of countries where political or religious conflicts exist.
3. Publications or displaying slogans that glorify or support some political or religious parties outside Kuwait.
4. Publication of personal interviews with citizens who support or oppose a certain policy which may place the state at war with other countries.
5. Publication or displaying slogans that glorify or support some religious or political parties in Kuwait.
6. Announcement of seminars that may probe tribal or sectarian conflicts.
7. Sale of books on sorcery and magic.
8. Spiritual healing (without a licence).
9. Sorcery and ability to heal.
10. Massage without a licence (because those activities are subject to Law No. 15/1960 dealing with commercial companies).
11. Sale and trade of weapons by commercial companies, individual establishments and individuals (swords, sabers, daggers, spears, knives, arrows and arrowheads, pointy rods, spiked clubs, knives, brass knuckles, electric sticks), because licenses from the Interior Ministry to import these.
12. Sale of airguns without a licence from the Interior Ministry.
13. Fireworks and explosives.
14. Sale of surveillance cameras and listening devices (bugs) of all types without obtaining a licence from the concerned authority.
Education Ministry:
1. Publication of ads for private tuitions.
2. Publication of supplementary school notes.
3. Ads of private institutes and universities that are not accredited by the Ministry of Education.
Ministry of Health:
1. Conventional and veterinary medicine.
2. Botanic, animal or chemical formulae.
3. Foods that have health-enhancing effect, claimed to be prepared for treatment.
4. Preparations that claim to provide energy or reduce or increase weight.
5. Change of structures of body parts. (It is a must that a license be obtained from the licenses committee on advertisements related to health and nutrition).
Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor:
1. Donation and blood money ads.
2. Charity homes’ advertisements.
3. Ads for lectures, cultural and religious gatherings (unless a permission is obtained from the ministry).
The order was signed by Fahd Sayyah Al-Ajmi, Director of Local Press Affairs at the Ministry of Information.
Catbird Seat
Last week, I wrote a post on Cat’s Paw from A Word a Day, and today they sent me this one. The theme this week is words and phrases which refer to birds, and I have always wondered about the catbird seat. You hear it used in political journals more than anywhere else.
If you subscribe to A Word a Day they send you a fresh word every day, with a definition, they show how it is used in a sentence, and you can click on a link to hear it pronounced. I’ve been a member for over ten years now, and they are still surprising me with new words.
catbird seat (KAT-burd seet) noun
A position of power and advantage.
[A catbird (named after its catlike call) is known to build a pile
of rocks to attract a mate and sit on the highest point around. This
expression was often used by Brooklyn Dodgers baseball commentator
Red Barber and further popularized by the author James Thurber in his
story “The Catbird Seat” where a character often utters trite phrases,
including the expression “sitting in the catbird seat”.]
-Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)
“So, Stillking Films seems perched in the catbird seat. ‘Things
are going very well for us at the moment,’ David Minkowski says.”
Steffen Silvis; Stillking is Still King; The Prague Post
(Czech Republic); Apr 5, 2007.
Word Press and Stats
On a quiet Thursday morning, I have some time to get an overview of what kind of articles my viewers like the best. It’s always a surprise to me. I put the most effort into my travel and book reviews. What, you, the viewer, likes best are recipes and photos.
In the last 30 days, the all time favorite has been – I hope you’re sitting down – Scalloped Potatoes. I mean like whoda thunk?? Second is Kuwaiti Customs, which I am guessing is of interest mostly to my non-Kuwaiti readers who are fascinated by the differences in our way of life, as well as the similarities, and third is one of my all time favorites Porn For Women. Fourth for the 30 day period is “Make This Case Go Away” where a Minister makes the police drop what appears to be an air tight case against two young men who abduct and rape a maid, and fifth, one of those anomalies, Tudo’s Vietnamese Restaurant in Pensacola.
What I like about WordPress is that there are options for all levels of users. I’m just a writer. My page is pretty vanilla, not a lot of bells and whistles, but the bells and whistles are out there if I go to the trouble of learning how to use them. I can include music, videos, and all kinds of other tools.
But it’s things like being able to look at the stats and track a post from birth to present, see what has had the biggest following in the last 30 days, and then in the last seven days, see how many people have me on feeds on a daily basis – all those things matter to me, and WordPress has them.
Best of all, it is just so easy. I don’t want to make a clock, I just want to know the time! WordPress is a great tool.
Sparkle Plenty Jumps In
Sparkle Plenty has always loved good jewelry. She is on first name terms with the major jeweler in our home town, and they always grin when she walks in. Her blogging name is well chosen!
She is my sister, although almost of another generation. She is the youngest aunt, the “fun” aunt. Everyone likes hanging around Sparkle Plenty’s house – and all the cousins gather there around the pool – or the pool table. Sparkle Plenty and her husband have all the fun toys, the fun gatherings and her house is full of laughter.
Her house is also full of pets. She and her husband, Mariner Man, have a soft spot for anything lost or injured or abandoned. One by one, they have gathered a menagerie of cats, dogs and birds who are all grateful not to be out on the streets. They take the ones who limp, the ones no-one else wants. Sparkle Plenty and Mariner Man are all about heart.
After a couple months of commenting, now she had jumped in to the blogging party, and her theme, Flashes of Light that catch the eye, the mind and the heart is perfectly expressive of her goodness and her compassion and her yearning to be a force for good in the universe. Welcome Sparkle Plenty, and may the force of good be with you!
Please visit Sparkle Plenty and welcome her to our virtual community.
Adult Sudden Death Syndrome
This is from the Tuesday, May 1, Kuwait Times.
Beijing: A Chinese judge charged with corruption died in his cell from “adult sudden death syndrome”, Xinhua news agency said yesterday. Investigators said Li Chaoyang, 38, had been uncooperative while in detention in Xing’an county . . . “Cuts on his face and other injuries” had been caused by a fall during an escape attempt,” they said. . . .
Shi Shaosen, head of the Guilin municipal law enforcement supervisory section and chief investigator int he case, said the prisoner had not been maltreated.
“Li Shaoyang’s sudden death conforms with adult sudden death syndrome, said Shi, citing a forensic report. Li’s relatives had claimed there were wounds on his body, a gash across his lip and one of this front teeth was missing.
They had questioned the cause of his death and wrote about it on a blog. . . .”he was naked, and bruises could ber clearly seen on his face, neck and back. My brother was just 38 years old, he had been in perfect health and hardly ever fell ill” said Ki Xiuqing. “I suspect the visible bruises on his body were caused by torture.”
You can read the rest of the report at the Kuwait Times.
There really is a Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. You can get more information about it HERE. Note the “normally non-traumatic, non-violent” part. This is part of the information they give:
What is SADS?
In a medical context the term SADS is most often used in reference to Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome. However in recent times the phrase Sudden Adult Death Syndrome or SADS has been adopted by the media for referring to the more general notion of a sudden death of an apparently fit and healthy young person. To avoid confusion it is important to understand all definitions of SADS when discussing different conditions or syndromes.
The use of the word ‘adult’ enables the distinction between different forms of Sudden Death Syndrome, making the distinction between Sudden Infant Death Syndrome – SIDS and Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – SADS.
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome events are defined as non-traumatic, non-violent, unexpected occurrences resulting from cardiac arrest within as little as six hours of previously witnessed normal health.
Welcome, Earthling!
The commenter on this blog known as Earthling, now has his own blog under his own name. A geographer with GoogleEarth, he has frequently given info and tips on Google Earth which I have passed along to you.
His blog is a hoot. Matt is a picky eater, surrounded at Google by free, high quality food in huge abundance and variety, and that is what he is blogging about. Maybe he will also show their on-site laundry and gym facilities 😉
In spite of his self-proclaimed picky eating habits, Matt is a very good cook, a creative cook, and I always loved it when I could hear him puttering around in the kitchen because something good was going to come out of it all. His one food addiction is hot peppery sauces, and his Jambalaya is so fiery I can’t eat but a bite or two.
Here is a Matt story (every family has these stories):
One day Matt’s Mom was making dinner when Matt, about fifteen at the time, walked in and asked “what’s for dinner?” She told him. Twenty minutes later the delivery man from a local restaurant pulled up and rang the doorbell – Matt’s dinner had arrived. Matt’s Mom was dumbfounded, and then laid down the law – if she was going to all the trouble of fixing dinner, her family would eat it! No delivery!
You can find him HERE at Google-Food-Spot.
Check in and give him a big welcome, please.
April 30 Blogging Silence
April 30 provides an opportunity for all bloggers to honor the victims of violence in this world by remaining silent. I will be honoring this moritoriumm, and will neither blog nor comment tomorrow.
It’s such a small thing. I wish I were doing more.
NYT Article on “Shiitization of Syria”
My neice, Little Diamond wrote this morning referring to an excellent piece entitled Catalytic Conversion about persistent rumors of “Shiitization” in Syria. The article, by Andrew Tabler, is from today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine section, begins here:
The Middle East is abuzz with talk of “Shiitization.” Since the war in Lebanon last summer, newspapers, TV news channels and Web sites in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere have reported that Sunnis, taken with Hezbollah’s charismatic Shiite leader Hassan Nasrallah and his group’s “resistance” to Israel, were converting to Shiite Islam. When I recently visited the semi-arid plains of eastern Syria, known as the Jazeera, Sunni tribal leaders whispered stories of Iranians roaming the Syrian countryside handing out bags of cash and macaroni to convert families and even entire villages to Shiite Islam.
You can read the original article from the New York Times Sunday Magazine section HERE.
“You’re Fired!”
Today on AOL Jobs Section is an article on how difficult employers find firing an employee, even employees they know are lazy, have addiction problems, or are persistently late or absent. The Fonz discusses this, and other work related issues while blogging from one of his two or three different jobs.
“You’re fired” isn’t a phrase that rolls off Ed Cook’s tongue. The owner of a Stone Mountain, Ga., State Farm agency, Cook recently became concerned about an employee who spent far too much time chatting on her cell phone at the office. The last straw was an hour-long personal call she made while he was out on business. When he confronted her and she shrugged it off, Cook decided — then and there — to let her go. In his 30 years at the agency, that was only the sixth time he had ever fired anyone.
“It kills me to have to fire an employee,” Cook says. “I lose sleep over it. But when I’m paying someone to work, I expect them to work.”
While television bosses — from Trump, to Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons, to Michael Scott on The Office — gleefully terminate employees with abandon, real-world employers are far more hesitant.
In a recent national survey, 61 percent of small-business owners said they find it hard to fire employees — even bad ones, according to SurePayroll, a Chicago-based small-business payroll firm.
“The survey confirms our belief that small-business owners struggle with many HR issues and would prefer to focus instead on growing their businesses,” says SurePayroll president Michael Alter. “Firing employees is particularly difficult.”
That’s why as many as 78 percent of business owners said they prefer to put it off as long as possible, the survey found.
Francisco Dao, the founder of StrategyandPerformance.com, a San Francisco-based executive coaching and consulting firm, remembers working at a financial firm alongside a full-blown alcoholic.
The Kuwait Left Turn
I actually first came across the first left turn in Saudi Arabia, and would watch in horrified fascination at the stoplights. Saudi Arabian driving was the worst I have seen, ever, anywhere in the world, but the driving has some inner logic if you are there long enough to get used to it. (I had thought I would hate not driving, but in Saudi Arabia, I was happy not to drive.)
In Saudi Arabia, there was no respect for lanes at all. At a junction there might be four legal lanes; one marked for people turning left, one for people turning right, and two for going straight ahead, but when the light turned red, there would be six or seven or eight cars lined up, all squeezed together, almost door to door. If there is a space, a car will fill it.
And maybe four or five of those cars would turn left, but not necessarily the four cars closest to the left. One might be in the far right turn lane, but going left. Yes, there were accidents, but not so often as you would think.
In Kuwait, they have refined the right-turn-lane-left-turn down to an art. I’ve gotten so used to it I hardly notice it any more, and that is why I am blogging about it now, so I will have it down before it falls of the screen.
Here is how it works. The guy in the far right lane realizes he needs to turn left. First move – he turns the wheels left and inches forward. Second step – this is optional – he gets the attention of the guy to his left and indicates he needs to go left. This is done with a combination of desperate looking eyes and a hand motion. Third step – he continues inching forward. Last step – just as the light is about to change/is changing he shoots out into the intersection, across four lanes of traffic, making his left turn.
There’s no honking. People are used to it.
That the lane second to the left also often goes left, although it is marked to go straight ahead, is a given.
It happens so often, we take it for granted.
The second variation on a left turn is that in Kuwait there are long stretches between stoplights or roundabouts, but there are conveniently marked areas where you can make a u-turn. There are left turn lanes that make it easy. But often, there are people who don’t want to get in line, or maybe realize too late that this is where they need to turn. No problem. They just get right up next to you and start edging their way in. It can be really scary when that someone is a big cement truck, or a bus full of workers.
Sometimes there can be two or three cars making that left turn at the same time. You would think it would be a disaster, and somehow, it all seems to work.
All this is . . . . very creative, refusing to be limited to what the law says is permissible. The problem becomes switching tracks when you go back to a country where the laws are less flexible.
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